Scandinavian Pillow

I call this pillow Scandinavian because the designs are Scandinavia-inspired.

The designs are on either side of the same pillow. Both of these designs are by Kelly Fletcher on Etsy, who had really beautiful designs that are impeccably done, unlike mine. The flower one is a little better than the other one, where all I can see is the uneven dots on the apple. There was a lot to learn with this one.

Here is what the designs should look like:

There were some stitches I hadn’t done before. One was the French knot. How did I do embroidery and cross stitch without knowing the French knot? I just tied a knot in some floss and threaded both ends through the fabric. With this, I finally learned how to do it. This is a great tutorial and the video really helped me understand it. I am now a pro. Ok, I’m passable. I could be better at placing them.

There are a huge number of stitch types in both of these patterns. Like, 20-30 in each or something. I’ll go over a few of my favorite. Most of these can be found at the site I linked to above in the French knot paragraph. Actually, I just remembered that Kelly Fletcher created a book of 120 stitches. It’s probable that all the ones she uses in the patterns are also in the book. I found it really useful.

Blanket stitch is probably my favorite stitch. A variation of it is the long “flower stem” inside the pear.

Palestrina is kind of fun. That one is the dark leaves in the center flower.

Coral stitch is also fun; it’s the veins of the leaf in the left flower.

There are some I could not do, such as the Chinese knot and the bullion knot. I just substituted with French knots and maybe the detached chain stitch.

As for the pillow assembly, I had this great idea where I’d fold over the edges and topstitch it, but that did not work. The fabric was semi-sheer so you could totally see where the edges were. Also, since I’m so sloppy, a lot of times the topstitching didn’t catch the fabric underneath. Thirdly, the folded edge stuck out, which you can see on the apple/pear side. That one actually was ok on the first two points so I left it. On the other side, it had all three problems, so I actually glued some twill ribbon over the edge and it didn’t look too bad. For the other pillows I made, I also had to glue a trim around the edge. Thankfully it worked. I had also thought of blanket stitching them, but I didn’t have enough time.

I have another KF design that I’ll post about sometime.